Copyright

Nature

02/09/2013

Oy! I think we had a bit of snow. At first things were nice and gentle - cute little snowflakes but then,

You see that golden blur? That's snow and wind. It wasn't so cute at that point. Luckily, we didn't lose power. We have a warm house and some food, even though the kids drank one gallon and a half of milk on Friday. Perhaps today we can get some more, but cars are banned from the roads.

My pilates class was canceled as was Helena's ballet and girl scout field trip. No word on Elijah's violin lesson. It's nice to be able to stay in and not have to go anywhere. So we are hunkering down with tea, making stew, bread and sweet potato pie. I think it's kind of a sweet potato pie weekend don't you?

The leaf is about an inch off the ground. At this point Greg had only shoveled a bit. In the end, the pile was about 8 feet high. There is a two foot bush under there somewhere.

There was about a four foot drift on our garage roof.

"Ergmergerd! Enough already!" Poor Doran.

Somebody was cold.

It's going to be 2 degrees tonight. We're thinking of those without homes or heat and hoping everyone will be warm and safe. There's so much to catch up on; I'll be back at this space soon.

09/27/2012

So there have been some interest in the psychic table I manned at my art league's art show. There were four tables. One table was set up for the an astrologer, two more for a married couple who were both ministers of a "spiritual" church, and another for a psychic who worked a lot with crystals and stones.

It was all very ordinary and a little extraordinary all at once. Even though I know better, I was picturing crystal balls and chimes. What we had was a kitchen timer and psychics talking about their plans to visit Block Island. The astrologer's computer was broken so she brought her tarot cards instead. I had forgotten that today's astrologer's use computers. One woman stopped by to talk to a psychic. I spent my time trying to ignore them which was hard because they were a foot away.

And that was the only customer they had during my one hour stint, besides the dog. Yes, I said "dog". One of the passersby had a cute little Bichon. Out of nowhere the psychic called out to the Bichon's owner as she walked by and told her that the dog preferred "her purple leash", and that the dog "told" her that she liked the psychic's purple clothes. At this point the dog was jumping up and down on the psychic's purple clothes. The psychic said that was just the feeling she received from the animal. Interestingly enough, the dog's owner said she had a purple leash for the dog at home along with a whole lotta purple toys. Weird. Then, of course, a great gust of wind blew over the heavy wooden easel that was holding up the signs advertising psychic readings. Hmm.

Soon my hour was up and it was time to go, but Helena who was helping me spotted some crystals. The girl loves rocks so she and a couple of the psychics started some discussion about what some of the rocks symbolized. The psychic had Helena hold a rock, while she put her forefinger on Helena's forehead and asked her to say the first thing that popped into her mind. The psychic said she would guess Helena's first thought.

Over and over with stone after stone Helena said nothing popped into her mind. This happened six times. It was getting a bit awkward-at least for me. Then the psychic gave Helena a green and white rock. She placed her finger on Helena's forehead. Again Helena said she had no thoughts popping up. However, a second later though, she "admitted" that her first thought was fairies. The psychic replied that she thought Helena was thinking about fairies, but didn't want to push it. I don't know what to think of that, but then the other psychic (the one who heard the Bichon's thoughts) said she got the sense of "grass and green things" not necessarily fairies. Helena replied, "Well, yeah, I have been making a fairy house with my brother all week. We use grass and moss and flowers-stuff like that." Strangely enough, my first thought was fairies too, probably because I have watched her build a fairy house all week. Then again how was I to know Helena was thinking about fairies? A good guess? intuition? or something else? Hmm.

This story reminds me I have a couple of super weird stories about spirits, death and my family. I think I'll save them for All Hallow's Eve. Y'all be sure to remind me to tell you about them.

05/04/2012

It's Photographic Friday, the day when I share practice photographs from the past few days or so. They aren't perfect. What is really? I'm enjoying the process of concentrating, creating and working up my 10,000 hours of practice. If the spirit moves you, feel free to share your own creations, photographic and otherwise with a link!

04/23/2012

This weekend was an awesome ending to a wonderful week of Spring Break.

Boy did we ever need Spring Break-all the toing and froing simply wears me out; I embrace my introversion, but it is a hard row to hoe when you hafta be places.

Friday we watched some crazy German pirate movie; I must say though that the dubbing was excellent.

There was laundry and yard work on Saturday, lots of manure, compost and fish fertilizer. You can guess what I smelled like by the end of the day. The fish fertilizer was actually the worst.

So now we have grapes, new raspberries, baby bear pumpkins, garlic, spinach, kale, radishes, lettuce, carrots, and tomatillos and three kinds of tomatoes started. We finally learned our lesson and decided to succession sow our lettuce and green leafies. The blueberries and strawberries have been fertilized so here's hoping we get a crop.

Finally, we received a good soaking rain. There were dust and pollen clouds here for weeks. The dirt was like fine sand. Now the birds and worms and plants are happy. The mallard couple came back to our temporary backyard pond. I only hope my little seeds didn't get washed away in the deluge.

The best part of the weekend though was the brick and rock painting by the kiddos. They really brighten things up and I just enjoy watching them execute their plans even if it does involve squabbling.

I spent a lot of time reading Adventures of Little Bear. This set was organized a bit like a chapter book. Everytime I tried to stop reading, Eden would tell me we had more to read. Still, despite almost falling asleep on her, I enjoyed watching her enjoy a book I loved as a kid even if Maurice Sendak's drawings of Cat fascinated and kind of freaked me out.

We capped off our weekend with a trip to the bowling alley. I think this activity will be a family favorite.

There was lots of slowing down time which I treasure. Greg was home so that was even better. I had time to just look at the kids-really look at them without having to go do this or that or drag someone here or there. Toing and froing is vastly overrated, but now we are back to it (sigh). Luckily I have been filled up and I think we can make it to summertime.

04/16/2012

It's gonna be short and sweet today as I am writing this on the computer in my jacked up basement.

Our weekend is continuing because it's spring break for us.

Friday I broke down and let the kiddos watch Ghostbusters despite the scary parts. It was funny for me and Greg, and okay for the kids. Elijah proclaimed that the movie was a bit confusing. Hmmm.

That means Greg is home more-yay!

Saturday I spent time in my studio-double yay! Afterwards I went out with some dear friends to celebrate our birthdays-two Aprils and a belated October-triple yay! They gave me some wonderful knitting gifts. It's great having friends that have the same yarn addiction.

Sunday was spent outside-doing some garden planning and rototilling. There was also lots of mud. I won't go into the part where a certain someone forgot that he was supposed to rinse off all of the mud before boot-scooting through my house.

The day ended with my birthday cake made by Greg, a sweet homemade gift from Elijah, hugs from the kids and dinner prepared by our local Chinese restaurant. The evening ended with me practicing painting trees in the old sketchbook and figuring out some issues with the painting I am making, and some gratitude that I am starting to get it.

03/23/2012

It's Photographic Friday, the day when I share practice photographs from the past few days or so. They aren't perfect. What is really? I'm enjoying the process of concentrating, creating and working up my 10,000 hours of practice. If the spirit moves you, feel free to share your own creations, photographic and otherwise with a link!

Have a wonderful weekend. I hope it's full of all of the people and things you love.

03/13/2012

We have been visiting Elizabeth Park a lot lately. It turns out they have an annual flower show and sale. I am glad we caught it this year. It smelled like heaven in the greenhouse. I wish I could magic that smell into this post, but oh well. I hope you enjoy.

03/12/2012

We watched How to Frame a Figg-quite a hoot with Don Knotts. We didn't even make brownies because the grandparents left plenty of treats, not to mention Girl Scout cookies had arrived the day before.

There was more color chart work and color discoveries-Winsor Yellow works wonders when combined with French Ultramarine. Brown madder is also a nice new discovery.

Saturday evening I broke out the old tablecloths and placed them on the floor so the kiddos could have a "pic-pic", as Eden calls it. Thankfully Greg made a tasty pizza for dinner because mama was tired.

Then off to a wine and cheese gathering at a friend's house-so good to hang out. We "partied" pretty hard until 12:30am, or rather 1:30am, due to that dastardly daylight savings time shift. It was such a relaxing evening after a full day.

Sunday we were tennis and obligation-free so there was space and time for going to the park together, watching Canada geese battle it out, sniffing flowers at the greenhouse and playing ball.

The heaps and heaps of laundry got folded by everyone working together - a first. The kiddos learned that folding clothes wouldn't cause them bodily harm.

Dinner was a Bittman special: spinach spaghetti with mushroom sauce and a side of squash (so out of season, but Doran begged and I complied).

While the kiddos rode their bikes, I read a bit of Taproot. It is a reassuring and lovely "community-zine". That's the most accurate way I can describe it. Shannon Hayes provided some of the most interesting quotes from the magazine: we "... must embrace what it means to fully be human. This means spending a few hours resting, a few hours playing, a few hours creating, a few hours teaching, a few hours learning, a few hours nourishing our bodies . . . a few hours tending the soil and connecting with ourselves . . . and our planet."

03/09/2012

It's Photographic Friday, the day when I share practice photographs from the past few days or so. They aren't perfect. What is really? I'm enjoying the process of concentrating, creating and working up my 10,000 hours of practice. If the spirit moves you, feel free to share your own creations, photographic and otherwise with a link!

11/15/2011

So I am back. Thank you so much for your well wishes and for hanging in there. I don't think I have ever been away from this space for so long. I missed "hanging out" with y'all.

Let's see. It all started with Freaktober N'oreaster. I am so weary of it, I probably won't go into all of the graphic detail here-sparing you and me. It's still kind of a long story so thanks for hanging in with me. Anyway, I was in my studio on Halloween Weekend feverishly trying to get work done for Open Studio. Usually I sit these storms out at home. When I started hearing branches pop all over the place and the thunder increase in intensity, I decided to call it a day. Good thing I did, because that storm wreaked all kinds of crazy havoc.

The heavy wet snow and accompanying winds ripped some siding and wires off of our house. Man we really need to change that paint color.

We lost power that night. I thought we were going to sail through, but then I heard the muffled explosion. When I saw downed lines in the street, I called the police department. The dispatcher told me there were downed lines on every street in our town. We were out of power from that Saturday until nine days-count 'em-nine days later. I could not believe it. At some points during the outage, it was 43 degrees in the house.

Luckily we were able to save our food. Greg had the great idea of packing snow into the coolers and then putting the coolers under the house. Our deep freezer stayed frozen. We were very lucky. People and businesses lost all kinds of food. Families stayed in hotels for days on end. It is heartbreaking. Some people lost their cars, had parts of their house destroyed and some even lost their lives. We are very fortunate.

We managed to score a generator in Massachusetts- it's called THE STORM RESPONDER and it deserves every one of those capital letters. We stayed with my mom a few days, cleaned up our house a lot, bonded more with our neighbors, got way behind in our work, and all kinds of tasks. The children were out of school for seven days. At first Doran had a very hard time with the sudden break in routine. He was a trooper and actually did very well a few days into it. During the worst of the outage, there were live wires were melting asphalt, fallen transfomers leaking oil into the ground, and trees were coming down all over the place. The town cancelled Halloween-twice.

There are still dangling wires (dead ones), tree branches, and debris all over the state. We still have an old telephone wire drooping in our driveway. The cable company left it hanging after they repaired the other wire. I hit it about every time I pull into our driveway. I need to call them about that.

If you look closely you can see a sign to CL&P. As day 5 without power rolled around, pitiful handmade signs popped up in a lot of neighborhoods. One even said, "CL&P please don't forget us." We didn't see a power crew or even survey crew in our neighborhood until day 7.

So now CL&P (our electric supplier) will hopefully have to do some reorganizing. We are so grateful for the linemen and women and for all of the crews that left their homes in other states to help our pitiful butts. I can't say that many of us have the same affection for the high level execs at CL&P. I mean does one dude really need to make millions, especially when the company keeps mishandling storm responses (see Hurricane Irene, ice storm of 2008) while the companies in our sister state of Massachusetts don't. I don't know the exact salary the CL &P president makes because the company used a loophole that would allow it to not disclose its executive salaries. Nicely done. We pay the second highest utility rates in the country, one would think they would have more shame. But no, for days the company did not communicate with our mayor. He then sent the police out to talk to the linemen to see where they had been working and where they were going next. When CL&P found out the crews had been talking to the police, they forbade the crews to talk to them. Amazing.

Snow and wind did this.

However, despite all of this, we were very, very lucky. We and all of our friends and family are safe. We were lucky to have the family resources that we have and to be able to stretch our financial resources farther (as painful as it was) to purchase a generator. I think my credit card went up in flames when we bought it. We never spend that much money at once.

We are lucky we don't live with cold, hunger and so much uncertainty every day like so many people in our town, state, country and world do. That is a gift indeed.

It's good to "see" you again friends. I'll be back tomorrow for Yarn Along. Yay normalcy!